In/out groups, social pain, genocide, aspergers - latest neuroscience

The blogposts "Are our lives controlled by our unconscious brain?", “How our brain creates a useful version of reality – latest neuroscience” and “How our brain decides for us” showed neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman’s research applied in the PBS series, "The Brain with David Eagleman".   This post will focus on social issues, taken from the Episode “Why Do I Need You?”.

Humans come equipped with social antennae. 

We judge other people’s intentions.  Our brains make these judgments constantly, but do we learn this life experience or are we born with it?   Babies under 12 months old have just begun exploring their world.  

Helpful bear

Mean bear

In a Yale University experiment the babies see a duck struggling to open a box w/two bears nearby - one bear helps the duck, the other is mean.  

When the babies choose a bear to play with, almost every one chooses the bear that’s been kind.  

 Our brains come equipped with social antenna for figuring out who’s trustworthy and who’s not.

The social importance of neural signaling 

At 40, John Robison was diagnosed with Asperger's in which some brain regions involved in social interactions are under-activated, resulting in diminished social skills. 

Dr. Olvaro Pascual-Leone
Harvard University

“I didn’t really understand that there were complex messages in faces until I was well into adulthood…I knew that people could display signs of crazed anger but… more subtle expressions like “I think you’re sweet”…or “I’d really like to do that”…I had no idea about things like that.”

 

But then John participated in an experiment at Harvard overseen by Dr. Olvaro Pascual-Leone to understand this phenomena by seeing “...how activity in one area affects activity in another area.”

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

John was given Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in which magnetic coils were placed next to his head to generate minute electrical currents in different regions of the brain to alter its activity.   

There was no effect until the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, a center involved in flexible thinking and abstraction, was activated.  Something dramatic happened.

“Somehow I became different.  After the TMS I was able to read signals from other people and understand what was going on."   

Somehow the TMS had unlocked a whole new world for John: 

       “…I had no idea there were these messages emanating from other people…now that I’m aware that they’re out there everything I do is different…it’s a big, big thing.”

Why do we mimic each other’s facial expressions?

Sensors for facial movements

Folk were wired up to measure movements in their facial muscles while they looked at photographs of faces.  When participants looked at a smile or a frown, their own facial muscles moved…automatically mirroring the expressions they’re seeing. 

A second group was injected with a powerful neurotoxin making it impossible for the brain to make your muscles contract - Botox.   

Botox reduces forehead wrinkling, but facial muscles also respond less.  A Duke University experiment had both groups look at facial expressions and then choose the word to best describe that emotion. 

Botox injection

The Botox group was worse at correctly identifying emotions.  The lack of feedback from their own facial muscles impaired their ability to read other people.   Botox users’ frozen faces makes it hard for us to read them, and also makes it hard for them to read us.

Dr. Eagleman - “When I’m happy or sad that feeling relies on the unconscious feedback from muscles in my face and our social brains.  So when we’re trying to understand what someone else is feeling, we ‘try on’ their facial expression.”

The ability to “feel another’s pain” is why stories are so powerful.

If your hand is stabbed with a syringe, it activates the brain’s “pain matrix” which involves different areas networking together. 

Feeling another's pain 

Similarly, when you watch someone get stabbed, the parts of your pain matrix which create an emotional experience are activated, so you literally “feel their pain”. 

Absorbed in stories, movies, video games, etc., we run a simulation of our being in that situation and experience their vantage points.   You “know” the stories aren’t real, but some neurons can’t tell if they are or not.   

Social situations activate the pain matrix.

Pain matrix in action 

Social pain from being excluded

To look at pain arising from social situations, a study looked at what happens when we feel excluded.  

While folk played a computer game of “catch” w/two generated “others”, their brains were scanned.  

After the “others” played “nicely”, they’d cut the folk out of the game, activating the “pain matrix”.   Social rejection actually “hurt”.

Is genocide a neural phenomenon?

In the Bosnian war, genocide was carried out against the local Muslims by Serbian perpetrators who weren’t strangers, but who were frequently neighbors for decades.   Traditional, universal values, like “don’t kill” were replaced, somehow, by “go kill” and brutal atrocities occurred.

Genocides keep happening…Rwanda, Darfur, Nanking, Armenia, Dachau, etc.   Dr. Eagleman was interested in understanding “why” through looking at genocide as a neural phenomenon.  

He found that it is only possible when “dehumanization” occurs on a massive scale by/for large sections of the population, as if all members of the group have somehow experienced the same change in brain activity when they think about the now “out group”.  

Propaganda manifested

Propaganda, like a contagious disease, is the perfect tool for creating this change as it plugs right into neural networks to “dial down” whether we care about other people.  The Serbians were bombarded on state-controlled media with distorted stories demonizing the Bosnian Muslims, including saying that the Muslims were feeding Serbian children to the lions at the zoo. 

Propaganda always plays this tune of dehumanization…make your enemy inhuman.  It has been perfected over time and now with the internet, any extremist group can reach millions of the people most likely to act upon them – young men. 

A single word label can determine whether you care

For every “in group” that we belong to, there is one that we don’t - based on anything…race, sexual preference, wealth, religion, etc.  An fMRI study with 130 folk showed them six labelled hands which were randomly stabbed by a syringe, activating the pain matrix.  Would they care differently if an “out” or an “in” group member was stabbed? 

In-group strong response to stabbing
Out-group no response to stabbing

When an “in group” member was stabbed, there was a large neural response, but when an “out group” member was stabbed, there was a flat line.

A single word label is enough to change your brain’s preconscious response to another person’s pain…whether we care about them.   It’s not religious…atheists care more about other atheists’ hands getting stabbed than they do about other people.  It’s only about which group you’re in.